I am convinced the ruling class has been pushing this idea MAINLY to transition their control of the world's electricity supply from petroleum and coal to Uranium-based nuclear power, something they can control because of it's connection to nuclear weapons. A very informative video of Allan Savory giving a talk on TedTalks ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI ) has recently come to my attention and now I am convinced, since his thesis of the true cause of climate change being desertification has been proven and known for decades now, that the reason the ruling class ignores his prescription for a solution that would not only solve the climate change problem, but would also solve many other problems such as feeding a growing population with what many people like the most, meat, that they don't want his solution now because a changing climate can help them rehabilitate the public image of nuclear power. The silence from the media and their lords of capitalism on desertification is deafening given the supposed crisis they cry like banshees over. I am convinced this means their agenda MUST be not about money per se, but about power: the real means of controlling society, to paraphrase Frank Herbert's Baron Harkonnen, "Who controls the electricity, controls the world." Thank you

Official response from Richard Wolffsubmitted

Whether or not private capitalists "caused" the environmental problems confronting us all - alone or together with other social forces - the issue you raised stands: those corporations cannot and do not address the problem as something urgent to be solved. Instead, for them the priority problem is howe to avoid financial losses and/or obtain profits from such problems whether or not they are "solved." That is how capitalism stands exposed as an inadequate economic system.

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Thank you Dr. Wolff for your reply. To be sure, capitalism is a failed system. But I raise this point of failure, their reaching for nuclear power to maintain their control of society, because I see it as a much greater threat than burning of fossil fuels or desertification or even the current wars of aggression. The Fukushima disaster is only the tip of the iceberg: Uranium-based nuclear power is an existential threat to the survival of Homo Sapiens and all other life on Earth. Every year the dice rolls at every LWR in the world and no matter how well managed, and capitalism manages it the worst of all possible ways – to make a profit, the time must come when the doom of our species is sealed. Be it in a hundred years or ten thousand, Humanity will end someday if we do not stop using Uranium in LWRs. There is a way to use Uranium safely, Thorium would be much easier, but the oligarchs can’t control it because it can’t be used to make nuclear weapons.

I think maybe if these maniacs can be thwarted in this attempt to make LWRs mainstream they will be crippled in a major way. Petroleum reserves are dwindling; it’s getting harder and harder for them to maintain control over existing reserves, and coal is a threat to air quality that even they recognize – besides the control problem it presents. I think the oligarchs, clearly a criminal plutocracy now (well, the soul of capitalism has always been that of a criminal), are desperate to implement nuclear power plants to replace all existing fossil fuel power plants because they know it’s their last chance to maintain control of society and their capitalist system.

That may be our last chance to defeat them outside of a bloody revolution, which BTW has been done before and has always resulted in the worst of humanity rising to the top again because of their lack of morals. I think you may be right; a slow process of more and more production being turned over to the workers until all capitalists are run out of business, that IS the answer. Marx’s “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” in slow motion, without a “Party”, an inverted totalitarianism of socialism with the workers in control… THAT’S the hope for the future of humanity.

Richard Wolff responded
with submitted2017-07-17 14:31:34 -0400

David Morton
published this page in Ask Prof. Wolff2017-07-17 01:32:09 -0400

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Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus at UMass Amherst and a visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University in New York. Richard Wolff is also a co-founder and active contributor of his non-profit: Democracy at Work